Georgia, Pain, Biomass, More: Saturday Morning Buzz, May 31, 2014

The FCC has announced testing of Google’s TV Band database system. “The Commission’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) announces that on June 2, 2014, it will commence a 45-day public trial of a new registration system for Google’s TV band database system. TV band databases support the operation of unlicensed devices on unused spectrum in the TV band (TV white space or ‘TVWS’). Currently, Spectrum Bridge Inc., another approved TV band database administrator, is managing the registration of protected entities on Google’s behalf. Google has now developed its own protected facility registration procedures to replace its use of the Spectrum Bridge procedures. This is a limited trial that is intended to allow the public to access and test Google’s new registration procedures to ensure that those procedures properly register certain facilities entitled to protection and that its modified database system provides protection to such registered facilities as specified in the rules. We encourage all interested parties to test these new registration procedures and provide appropriate feedback to Google.”

More Google: first we had Google Glass, then we had Google Glass pushback, now we have Google Glass pushback pushback. “Some Glass users are fighting back against establishments that have the *ahem* audacity to request privacy for their patrons, and negative reviews are their weapons of choice – even if they’ve never stepped foot in the place.”

A British 30s and 40s film archive has been completed. “An online archive of films showing snapshots of typical life in Britain in the 1930s and 1940s has been completed. The final 25 movies in the collection have been digitised and loaded onto the British Council’s website. Scenes include the pubs of England, Sheffield’s steel industry, London’s preparations for war and a mystery for Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad.”

A new database providing information on biomass facilities has been launched. “The Wood2Energy system includes data on energy produced from wood on-site as a byproduct of a primary manufacturing process, such as residues produced by sawmills or pulp and paper mills–the largest single producers of energy from woody biomass. The database also includes the growing number of facilities dedicated to conversion of wood to energy.”

The NIH has launched a federal pain research database. “Users of the database easily can search over 1,200 research projects in a multi-tiered system. In Tier 1, grants are organized as basic, translational (research that can be applied to diseases), or clinical research projects. In Tier 2, grants are sorted among 29 scientific topic areas related to pain, such as biobehavioral and psychosocial mechanisms, chronic overlapping conditions, and neurobiological mechanisms.”

The University at Buffalo has released a new online LGBT archive. “Compiled by Nissa Thor, a graduate student in the Department of Library and Information Studies, the archive contains articles from UB’s student newspaper, The Spectrum; documents from student groups such as the Gay Liberation Front (from the 1970s); yearbook images and other materials.”